![]() ![]() The various feats that Supergirl (a game Helen Slater) is allowed to engage are not remotely super. Credible adult characters are replaced by bumbling buffoons and lovesick kids. But yes, Supergirl is a terrible film and a deeply unserious film. ![]() Let us again thank our lucky stars that Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz saved us from the Mario Puzo-scripted Superman camp-fest that we almost got. ![]() Now considering the tone of Richard Lester's Superman III the prior year, it's hard to entirely blame this on sexism as opposed to just the Salkinds not believing in their fantasy. Simply put, Supergirl, and the concept of Supergirl, is treated as a lark. The key problem with Supergirl is one that arguably plagues the female-centric action sub-genre right up to this day, which is a lack of faith in the seriousness of its story. But once she gets to Earth the film goes to pot. The film starts fine, with Kara El Zor accidentally losing a vital power source and escaping to Earth to track it down in order to save the world. The bad news is that it replaces said three-act structure, which is now the go-to template for superhero origin movies (see Spider-Man, Batman Begins, Captain America), with something much less enjoyable. The Salkinds and director Jeannot Szwarc (director of Jaws 2 and currently a 75-year old man who still directs copious amounts of high-profile television to this day) would try that trick two years later with Santa Claus: The Movie, but Supergirl doesn't necessarily copy the plot and structure of the 1978 Richard Donner/Tom Mankiewicz classic. The highest compliment I can pay the film is that it is not a remake of Superman: The Movie. For the record, I watched the 138-minute director's cut of Supergirl because that is the version I happen to have (this is back when I bought everything in its most comprehensive format). It is arguably the first modern attempt to craft a female-centric comic book superhero movie and its failure as art and as commerce set the tone for so-called conventional wisdom for thirty years. Anyway, enough introduction, let's dive in. Since we just got word that CBS would be indeed picking up the new Greg Berlanti-produced Supergirl show (starring Melissa Benoist as the title hero), I thought this might be a good time to take a glance at the 1984 Supergirl movie. Now you can certainly point to video game movies ( Resident Evil, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, etc.) and fantasy-lit fiction ( The Hunger Games, Divergent), or outright originals ( Underworld, Lucy) as proof that female-centric action films can be highly profitable, but the particular sub-genre of comic book superhero movie has been a relative failure for girl-powered vehicles. One of the reasons that it's been difficult to have a conversation about the would-be bankability of female comic book superhero movies is that there have been so few of them over the past 40 years. ![]()
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